Electronic phase transitions in Pr$_{0.5}$Ca$_{0.5}$MnO$_3$ epitaxial thin films revealed by resonant soft x-ray scattering

We report the study of magnetic and orbital order in epitaxial thin films grown on – . Resonant soft x-ray scattering revealed significant modifications of the magnetic order in the film as compared to the bulk. Namely (i) a different magnetic ordering wave vector, (ii) different spin directions and (iii) an additional magnetic reordering transition. We demonstrate that an analysis of the resonant scattering which is based solely on local symmetries and which does not involve a modeling of energy-dependent lineshapes allows to extract this detailed microscopic information. This approach significantly simplifies the analysis and interpretation of resonant scattering data.